without great injury. He had convinced her that the laws of God and
man gave him the right to that indulgence with his legal wife as often
as he desired, and if conception ensued, it was no fault of his; that
he was blameless, as to any wrong done. I could not but feel disgusted
and horrified, to see all that was lovely and good in my child thus
sacrificed to a man’s low sensualism. When a husband thus deliberately
treats his wife as a mere means of sensual gratification, it blunts
all that is refined and noble in her, and makes him an object of
disgust to her. And she, in her nature, must exercise the
love-principle or starve, and she wastes it on others more congenial,
who will respect her womanly nature. Often this is the cause of her
throwing herself into temptation, and becoming a victim of the base
passions of those who are ever on the watch for such. Thus she is
driven, step by step, to utter prostitution,—all from being made the
slave to the sensual passion of the husband. Had she had a
spiritually-minded and noble husband, or the courage to assert her
rights, her home would have been her heaven, and her progress and
improvement, not her degradation and ruin, the law of his life.”
Read the following. It must be an inhuman and monstrous religion which
can countenance a crime so unnatural as enforced maternity, or
ante-natal murder:—
“Those among us who are members of our churches, and are counted most
exemplary patterns of purity and piety, to my certain knowledge,
practise ante-natal murder, and they justify themselves by saying, ‘It
would be a greater sin against children to entail on them the curse of
an abhorred existence, than to kill them before they are born!’ These
pious women affected to be greatly shocked, when, in your lectures
here, you appealed to their husbands to control their passions, and
spoke of the crime of enforcing on women a maternity whose
responsibilities and sufferings they were not prepared joyfully to
welcome. But Nature is ever true to herself. No matter who they are
that perpetrate this outrage, whether rich or poor, high or low, pious
or impious, whether in the church or out of it, they become weakly,
and incurably diseased; their constitutions soon break down under this
abuse, and they pass away by consumption, or some nameless, wasting
disease, and their death is, by most people, attributed to a ‘wise and
good Providence.’ The husbands, the real murderers, are pitied, and
soon comforted by taking other wives, only to kill them in the same
way. How can a woman feel proud of the nature God has given her, after
thus abusing it? She cannot. She must feel in her soul that she is
degraded, and her very existence becomes a loathing to herself. Who
drives her to this inhuman deed?—who, indeed, but the very husband to
whom she so fondly looked for protection from all harm?”
DEAR FRIEND,—The following positions seem to me to be clearly sustained:
1. That it is a crime of the deepest dye, for a husband to impose on his
wife, without design, a maternity whose responsibilities and sufferings
she cannot joyfully endure.
2. That it is a sin for a husband to urge his wife to submit to a
relation which may result in an undesigned and undesired maternity.
3. That no wife can stand proud and stainless before her own soul, who
allows herself to come into a relation with her husband which may entail
on her the curse of an unwelcome maternity, and reduce her to the
revolting alternative of ante-natal murder, or of giving birth to a
child whose existence is abhorrent to her soul.
May not every child, in justice, demand of its parents, as a birthright
inheritance, (1) a healthy body, free from all tendency to disease; (2)
a healthy soul, free from all tendencies to idiocy, and insanity of
intellect or of heart; (3) a designed existence, the result of a wise
and tender forethought, and not of blind, impetuous, selfish, sensual
passion; (4) a love origin, rather than a mere sensual, animal origin;
and (5) a joyous welcome into life? As you cast your little ones afloat
on the ocean of eternal being, be careful to secure to them this outfit;
then may you hope to see them bravely and successfully outride the
storms of life, and enter into a true and endless rest. But what hope is
there for these poor, diseased, suffering little ones, the offspring of
a loathed and hated maternity, whose very existence, ere they were born,
was made accursed by the mothers that bore them, and by the fathers,
whose only thought or aim in the act in which they originated was mere
sensual gratification? God pity these poor, unwelcome ones! No earthly
parents welcome them into life with loving smiles. In whose warm, loving
bosom can they be tenderly cherished? To whom can they look for love and
sympathy? Again I say, GOD PITY THESE POOR, UNWELCOME CHILDREN!
That your home may never be cursed by an undesigned and undesired
maternity, or by an unwelcome child, is the anxious wish of
Your friend,
H. C. W.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.